Ashley Madison Claims Business Is Booming, Source Code Reveals Site May Be Scamming Male Users

It seems that Ashley Madison, the infamous Canada-based infidelity dating site, is attracting thousands of new members amid its ongoing hacking scandal.

In a press release dated August 31, 2015, Avid Life Media, the company that owns Ashley Madison, claimed that the cheating site is experiencing a huge increase in membership as hundreds of thousands of members signed up for the online dating service.

The dating site became hugely popular when hackers published stolen data from 33 million Ashley Madison accounts. The hacking fiasco resulted in the resignation of Noel Biderman, the company’s chief executive officer. According to Avid Life Media, Biderman’s departure is in the firm’s best interests.

The August 31 statement further said that close to 90,000 women signed up for the platform. “Last week alone, women sent more than 2.8 million messages within Ashley Madison,” Avid Life Media said.

The Ashley Madison website is said to have members all over the United States, and more than 50 counties across the globe. The dating site also has the Ashley Madison app, a smartphone application that enables members to make in-app purchases. The Ashley Madison app is a major revenue source for the firm.

But not everybody believes every word Avid Life Media says about Ashley Madison.

Gizmodo recently revealed there is new evidence that proves Ashley Madison created 70,000 female bots to send millions of fake messages to attract male users. It has been previously reported that the website may have 12,000 active women users.

Annalee Newitz of Gizmodo added that, while there is truth in Ashley Madison’s claims that there’s a small number of active women users within the platform, an analysis of the site’s source code support allegations that thousands of bots were created to create the illusion of a bigger female population. This fraudulent strategy by Ashley Madison, according to Newitz, appears to be sophisticated, deliberate and lucrative.

“What that means is that we have absolutely no data recording human activity at all in the Ashley Madison database dump from Impact Team. All we can see is when fake humans contacted real ones. In other words, the dramatic discrepancy between men and women is entirely because Ashley Madison’s software developers trained their bots to talk almost exclusively to men,” Annalee Newitz added.

Representatives for Ashley Madison, however, deny allegations they created female bots to lure male users and maintain that journalists made inaccurate assumptions. They said that they make customers happy on a regular, consistent basis and that’s why Ashley Madison is the number one dating site for those who seek clandestine relationships.